MLI-84 OWS?

Has anyone had experience with the MLI-84 OWS? All the pics I've seen and specs I've read sound good, but I'm wondering how much mechanically improved they are from the original MLI-84/BMP-1, and whether the OWS is fully stabilized, and how good the night vision works.

I'm also wondering why Romania hasn't built something like the BTR-T or Achazarit using the TR85 chassis.

..I support your question about Achazarit.., we've talked about why we didn't transforme our T 55 , TR 77 and TR 85 in Achazarits and I think too that it would be a good ideea ...and a cheap one... , a TR 85 Achazarit would be a more potent VBL than MLI 84 M 1... ,120mm ...good idea..

But deploying a heavy APC for NATO missions will be a lot harder than a lighter vehicle.

transforming T 55 or TR 85 would be not so hard..., using the same concept like TR 85 M 1 with OWS 25 and ATGW..., is even easier to mentain..., common spear parts.., common training..., but more powerfull than MLI 84 M 1...

Germany has 30 tons VBL...TR 85 Achazarit would have the same weight...and we need to develope a VBL for our purposes first...

And this modification will give something more to work to our military industry, and money, know how, wxperience. Why not? For sure, in the future will be a lot of conflicts where romania will join her allies and our soldiers need protection.

Iama

I'm kind of disappointed, though, in that the MLI-84 OWS still retains what appears to be the armor suite of the BMP1 series. I think a bunch of ERA and some spaced sideskirts would be in order. Putting the gun way up there means that you could armor the heck out of the chassis, especially if the Perkins engine and upgraded suspension were designed for it. It would still be air deployable, too, as you could take the skirts off for deployability.

I don't like the firing ports. They weaken the armor and its hard to hit anything when you use them. A couple of GPMGs would allow soldiers to fight effectively out of the rear hatches, imo.

There is a GPMG at one of the rear hatches.

I had seen them on the MLI-84 without the OWS conversion, but I haven't seen one mounted with the OWS.

Still, keeping the firing ports is a mistake.

Is there any information on the fire control and sighting systems of MLI-84?

It appears to be the standard Rafael OWS-25R system. I don't have the link handy, but this is a proprietary system that should be easily found by googling its name.

Thanks. The reason why I asked is because I'm a little addicted to Steel Panthers: Modern Battle Tank and I noticed many mistakes in the Romanian equipment. The TR-85 M1 was only given 270mm KE protection on the front turret and 190mm KE on the front hull. This is very inconsistent with the pictures I've seen. You can simply tell by looking at them that M1 has seriously beefed up in terms of armour. Anyway, Wikipedia and other sources put its front turrent protection to 580mm against KE. So currently the M1 doesn't even have half the protection it should have and this puts the Romanian player at serious disadvantage. The FCS and vision is also badly rated imo. Both are rated 20 in the game which is what the first T-72 has. I checked the manufacturer's site and says "fire control system CICLOP-M with night-time passive imagine intensifier or termovision." termovision? what do you think the manufacturer meant by termovision? thermal imager? if this is the case then M1 should have twice the vision it has now because at the moment it's practically blind. and the fire control should be increased considerably if the optics are good enough to hit targets over a distance of 4km.

Getting back to MLI-84... I checked the turret manufacturer's website and mentions an optional thermal imager. Does anybody know whether the MLI-84 is equipped with such system? Also, what Israeli units use this turret?